The Calendar : The 5000-year Struggle to Align the Clock and the Heavens - and What Happened to the Missing ten Days

ISBN: 1857029798) . Paperback, 360 pp. Ill. in BW. With bibliographical notes, bibliography, index. The Observer about this book: 'The Calendar sparkles. Gripping, expansive and scholarly, indespensable.' The Times: 'Deserves to be read by a wide audience.' When Mao declared in 1 October 1949 that China would follow the Gregorian calendar, the entire world agreed what the date was FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME. This is the first complete history of the attempts to reconcile the heavens with the clock, and of the universal establishment of the calendar. A history of TIME.